By the open window of the family sitting-room sat a pleasant-faced, sedate-looking young woman, busily engaged embroidering a white frock for a child. She was neatly though plainly dressed, and there was an air of precision and daintiness about her which some women acquire as they grow older, especially if they are unmarried. It was a pleasant face, as I said, yet there was a grave firmness about the mouth, a dauntless gleam in the fine clear brown eye, which betokened that Jane Gray was not without a will of her own. She looked what she was, a firm, prudent, self-reliant woman, who had known the cares as well as the joys of life. To her dying mother Jane Gray had solemnly pledged herself not to quit the roof-tree of the manse so long as her father needed her care. Both the giver and receiver of that promise had felt assured that it would not be long ere she was released from its fulfilment, because the minister of Inverburn was at that time in a precarious state of health. But, to the joy of those who loved him, certain means prescribed by an Edinburgh physician were blessed to his complete recovery, and he seemed to receive a new lease of life. That made no alteration, however, in the resolution of the elder daughter of the manse. Very faithfully year by year she discharged her duties as mistress of her father’s household. She was mother and sister in one to her brothers, and it was a question which was dearer to her heart, the broad-shouldered, bluff-mannered farmer Andrew, or gentle-voiced, scholarly, meek-minded David, minister of the neighbouring parish of Broomhill. She had watched them go forth to their own homes, with a blessing and a tear, and she had dressed for her bridal her fair and delicate sister Agnes, who had now been for two years the wife of Adam Hepburn of Rowallan. It must not be supposed that Jane Gray had no other alternative but to remain under her father’s roof-tree. Nay, it was far otherwise. Many knew and appreciated her sterling worth, and more than one had pleaded for her love. But though there came one at last who stirred her heart to its deepest depths, she shook her head. She looked at her father’s white head and drooping shoulders, thought of his desolate old age, the empty, childless home she would leave behind, and, crushing down the yearnings of her heart, she answered no. Perhaps it was that experience, undreamed of by those to whom she so unselfishly ministered, which had lined her broad brow, and tinged her hair with grey before its time. Her face in its repose was apt to look sad, for it was in the stillness of an evening such as this that Jane Gray’s heart was often peculiarly stirred by memories of the past. She laid down her seam at length, and leaning her arm on the sill, looked out into the flower-laden garden, which was sweet with all the lovely bloom of spring.